Just bumped across a review on the new iPads and two sentences caught my eye. The reviewer mentioned surfing to Zillow, the site that lists houses for sale. He commented on how the pictures looked all pixelated.

That's important, and it's also a sesimic change in the digital world of our websites and images on the mobile devices viewed by our clients. In 'the good old days,' the way to keep your web pages loading fast, and not bust through your storage and bandwidth limits of your hosting provider, the best bet was to 'downsize' the images to be 100dpi (dots per inch) down to no less than 72dpi.[...]

Is an American General losing his job for trying to save the Americans besieged in Benghazi? This is the latest potential wrinkle in the growing scandal surrounding the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that left four men dead and President Obama scrambling for a coherent explanation.

On October 18, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared unexpectedly at an otherwise unrelated briefing on 'Efforts to Enhance the Financial Health of the Force." News organizations and CSPAN were told beforehand there was no news value to the event and gave it scant coverage. In his brief remarks Mr. Panetta said, "Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.' This came as a surprise to many, since General Ham had only been in the position for a year and a half. The General is a very well regarded officer who made AFRICOM into a true Combatant Command after the ineffective leadership of his predecessor, General William E. "Kip" Ward. Later, word circulated informally that General Ham was scheduled to rotate out in March 2013 anyway, but according to Joint doctrine, "the tour length for combatant commanders and Defense agency directors is three years." Some assumed that he was leaving for unspecified personal reasons.[...]

Business professor Bill Jackson may have rough days when he wishes he could wear a flak jacket.

But this past summer, it became mandatory.

Jackson, who teaches at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, spent 45 days in Iraq sharing his insights with university teachers about how to encourage business startups and entrepreneurial activity. While in Baghdad, Jackson lived at one fortified compound and taught at another. His commute of less than 10 miles took 90 minutes, thanks to frequent stops at Baghdad checkpoints. Jackson routinely traveled in a three-vehicle convoy of armed security guards while wearing a flak jacket.

It wasn't for show. Two hours before he arrived for a workshop at Baghdad University, an Iraq general was assassinated at the front gate. Other violence occurred nearby while he was in the city.

"I was naive about the Middle East," Jackson conceded in a recent discussion about his Iraq experience.

Iraq is not poor. The country is rich with oil, holding the world's third largest reserves.[...]

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/288127_A_USFSP_professor_is_challenge#rssSat, 27 Oct 2012 12:35:37 PDTBusinessBoeing Now Has A Missile That Destroys Only Electronics And Leaves All Else IntactCurtDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

[...]The Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), led by Boeing's Phantom works, promised to change the face of contemporary warfare, and its test was a complete success.

CHAMP flew over the Utah Test and Training Range last Tuesday, discharging a burst of High Power Microwaves onto the test site and brought down the compound's entire spectrum of electronic systems, apparently without producing any other damage at all. Even the camera recording the test was shut down.

Posted in the event some techie is working late being mySQLish and getting the munchies and thinking about the future...

http://jalopnik.com/5953280/are-these-the-pizza-trucks-of-the-future

Have you ever though about what would make the ultimate pizza delivery vehicle? Something that would match Neil Stephenson's The Deliverator. Dominos did, so they teamed up with Local Motors and sponsored a design competition to come up with something better than that miserable, rusted out beater that brought pizza to your apartment last time you got the late night munchies.[...]

I like this visualization, perhaps because its crude, almost childish look contrasts with the horror it depicts in such a simple way: Worldwide dictators ordered by the number of killings, one drop, one million dead.

When scouting enemy positions, our forces rarely have the luxury of a proper airstrip—or even a fairway—with which to land an unmanned aircraft. That's why California's AeroVironment corporation has designed a drone that lands just about anywhere—water hazards and sand traps be damned.[...]

Theme of the article: No one has been seen using one yet...no one....spooky...talk about vaporware....

http://gizmodo.com/5952258/dont-preorder-microsoft-surface

Microsoft's Surface RT tablet is gorgeous. It's innovative. It's without exaggeration the most exciting new gadget to come along in years. And if you buy one today, you're a fool.

If you've got $500 to spare (really $600, since you'll want that fancy keyboard cover), you can preorder a Surface RT tablet today and have it land on your doorstep on October 26th. Don't. Don't even consider it. In fact, there are three very specific conditions that have to align to even consider preordering any gadget. Let's review:

The product comes from a company with an infallible track record. There's a reasonable expectation that the product might sell out quickly. Your life will be significantly worse if you go more than a week without the product.[...]

While skiers and snowboarders are waiting breathlessly for a new winter to arrive, those who get to feel it first are actually surfers in Hawaii, and if you ask them, they'll be the first to tell you winter arrived with a bang on Tuesday, as 50-foot swells generated from the first north Pacific storm of the season slammed the north shore of Maui. [...]

Retired Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound, celebrated the 65th anniversary of his ground breaking event with a re-enactment at Nellis Air Force Base October 14.

Yeager was serving as a test pilot and flying the experimental Bell X-1 named the, "Glamorous Glennis," Oct. 14, 1947, when he successfully broke the sound barrier. "Up until that time we weren't able to do it," Yeager said. "Finally, in Oct. 14, 1947, we succeeded, and that opened up the doors of space to us."

Yeager's re-enactment flight began when he and the aircraft's pilot, Capt. David Vincent, 65th Aggressor Squadron pilot, flew an F-15D Eagle to 45,000 feet over Edwards AFB, Calif., and at 10:24 a.m. broke the sound barrier again. "It was the greatest moment of my life so far," Vincent said. "It's like being with Christopher Columbus when he discovered the new world or like being with Orville and Wilbur Wright on the first flight."[...]

He was portrayed by Sam Elliot in the movie: "We were Soldiers Once and Young"

Command Sgt. Maj. Plumley fought in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam and made five parachute jumps into combat. Friends said he never told war stories and was known to hang up on people who called to interview him. ... 'He's iconic in military circles,' Camp said. 'Among people who have been in the military, he's beyond what a movie star would be. . . .[...]

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/287081_Fullbore_Friday-__Command_Serg#rssFri, 12 Oct 2012 10:12:19 PDTUS NewsPhysicists say there may be a way to prove that we live in a computer simulationCurtDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

Back in 2003, Oxford professor Nick Bostrom suggested that we may be living in a computer simulation. In his paper, Bostrom offered very little science to support his hypothesis — though he did calculate the computational requirements needed to pull of such a feat. And indeed, a philosophical claim is one thing, actually proving it is quite another. But now, a team of physicists say proof might be possible, and that it's a matter of finding a cosmological signature that would serve as the proverbial Red Pill from the Matrix. And they think they know what it is.

According to Silas Beane and his team at the University of Bonn in Germany, a simulation of the universe should still have constraints, no matter how powerful. These limitations, they argue, would be observed by the people within the simulation as a kind of constraint on physical processes.

Full sizeSo, how could we ever hope to identify these constraints? Easy: We just need build our own simulation of the universe and find out. And in fact, this is fairly close to what the physicists are actually trying to do. To that end, they've created an ultra-small version of the universe that's down to the femto-scale (which is even smaller than the nano-scale).[...]

I still can't believe you punched out early on me, but glad to hear from the guys that you fought like a hero–no surprise there.

You should know, your efforts resulted in the rescue of over 20 Department of State personnel. They are alive today because of yours and Ty's heroic action.

I know you hate funerals as much as I do but, the service in Winchester was humbling and inspiring. The people of Boston are amazing. I had to choke back the tears as me and the boys rolled through town, and thousands of people lined the streets to honor a hero and our friend and teammate. Seeing American citizens united around a hero, if only for a brief moment, restored my faith in humanity and that there's other things more important in life than killing each other.[...]

Currently on a weather hold, but....all preps have been made to break Col Kittenger's record from the 1960s (102KFt). Col Kittenger is one of the advisoers for this effort, BTW.

NASA will gain valuable information from a private effort in regards to alternate methods of space vehicle escape techniques.

Listed under Science for that reason, sa limits of physiology, flight equipment, personal protective equiment and materials, as well as the flight characteristics of a human form enclosed in a suit will be obtained.

The USS Michael Murphy is the US Navy's newest warship, but, unlike the rest of the fleet, it is not named for a former president, distinguished member of Congress, or a historic figure from the past. Instead, the 510-foot destroyer will be named for a Long Island native and Navy lieutenant who was the first American awarded the Medal of Honor in the Afghanistan War.

Michael Murphy was a SEAL who was killed with two fellow SEALs during an ambush in 2005, reports The Washington Post. Commander Tom Shultz, the commander of the USS Michael Murphy and its crew of about 300, stated:

'Here is someone who is just like us. We've seen his childhood photos and you look at those photos and in every single one of them we have that same photo of our childhood.'[...]

More Secure, Or Maybe NotAccording to conventional wisdom, malware and similar types of exploits are reserved for the Windows community -- not for their slightly more hip cousins who, through the years, have remained committed to the Mac. While some people claim that Macs are more secure, others maintain that they merely present a lower profile, given that most businesses for a long time standardized almost exclusively on the PC -- except, of course, for a smattering of artsy folks who were allowed to use Macs. But all has not been quite so easy in Macland. Please join us for this brief tour examining Mac attacks through the years.[...]

On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.

But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.

While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America's best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.

These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against.[...]

Few high school sweethearts make it past the hat toss at graduation. But Taylor Morris and Danielle Kelly have made it through so much more.

The Iowa natives stayed together and, in 2007, Morris enlisted as an explosive ordnance disposal technician in the Navy. After years of training, Morris was assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit 12 and the couple moved to Virginia Beach, Va.

While Morris, a second class, was deployed to Afghanistan, the couple talked about their future plans. They considered where they would live when he got back and left the Navy, and adventures they would have, like skydiving and a trip to Africa.

But then Morris stepped on an improvised explosive device, losing both legs above the knee, his left arm and right hand. But that tragic incident has done nothing to stifle the couple's relationship.[...]

A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.

A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.